Landmarks on Finnishwomens road to Suffrage and Equal Citizenship

12 x 18 cm

Fe y esperanza : women's road to leadership and ministry in the Lutheran church of El Salvador 1952-2009

The Lutheran Church of El Salvador made a decision, in 1986, to open the ministry to women. How was it possible in the midst of a Latin American macho culture and after having been influenced by the theologically conservative, North American mission work? This research examines the kinds of internal and external factors which led women to leadership and ministry, and the context in which this development occurred. The roles of women have been scrutinised during several time periods. During 1952-1974 the focus was on women as missionary wives and fundadoras (founding mothers). Women’s roles as laywomen grew in 1975-1985. After the outburst of the civil war in 1980, women advanced to lay leaders. The ministry was opened for women and the first deacon pastors were installed in 1986 and the first presbyter pastors were ordained in 1994. In 2009, more women than ever were working in different levels – from laywomen to leaders – in the Lutheran Church of El Salvador. The research shows that the reasons for the development and changes concerning women’s positions and roles lie in the impact of significant individuals, liberation theology, the feminist and women’s movement, civil war and the theology of life.

Finnair’s “New Silk Road” in the New Millennium: An Analysis of the Construction of Asia and of the Company

During the past century, an increasingly diverse world provided us with opportunities for intercultural communication; especially the growth of commerce at all levels from domestic to international has made the combination of the theories of intercultural communication and international business necessary. As one of the main beneficiaries in international business in recent years, companies in airline industries have developed their international market. For instance, Finnair has developed its Asian strategy which responds to the increasing market demand for flights from Europe to Asia in the new millennium. Therefore, the company manages marketing communication in a global environment and becomes a suitable case for studying the theories of intercultural communication in the context of international marketing. Finnair implemented a large number of international advertisements to promote its Asian routes, where Asia has been constructed as a number of exotic destinations. Meanwhile, the company itself as a provider of these destinations has also been constructed contrastively. Thus, this thesis aims at research how Finnair constructs Asia and the company itself in the new millennium, and how these constructions compare with the theories of intercultural communication. This research applied the theories of international marketing, intercultural communication and culture. In order to analyze the collected corpora as Finnair’s international advertisements and its annual reports in the new millennium, the methods of content analysis and discourse analysis have been used in this research. As a result, Finnair has purposefully applied the essentialist approach to intercultural communication and constructed Asia as an exotic “Other” due to the company’s market orientation. Meanwhile, Finnair has also constructed the company itself two identities based on the same approach: as an international airline provider between Europe and Asia, as well as a part of Finnish society. The combination of intercultural communication and international marketing theories, together with the combination of the methods of content analysis and discourse analysis ensure the originality of this paper.

Communication challenges in virtual teams – a case study of implementing computer-mediated communication technologies in inter-organisational virtual teams

This thesis seeks to answer, if communication challenges in virtual teams can be overcome with the help of computer-mediated communication. Virtual teams are becoming more common work method in many global companies. In order for virtual teams to reach their maximum potential, effective asynchronous and synchronous methods for communication are needed. The thesis covers communication in virtual teams, as well as leadership and trust building in virtual environments with the help of CMC. First, the communication challenges in virtual teams are identified by using a framework of knowledge sharing barriers in virtual teams by Rosen et al. (2007) Secondly, the leadership and trust in virtual teams are defined in the context of CMC. The performance of virtual teams is evaluated in the case study by exploiting these three dimensions. With the help of a case study of two virtual teams, the practical issues related to selecting and implementing communication technologies as well as overcoming knowledge sharing barriers is being discussed. The case studies involve a complex inter-organisational setting, where four companies are working together in order to maintain a new IT system. The communication difficulties are related to inadequate communication technologies, lack of trust and the undefined relationships of the stakeholders and the team members. As a result, it is suggested that communication technologies are needed in order to improve the virtual team performance, but are not however solely capable of solving the communication challenges in virtual teams. In addition, suitable leadership and trust between team members are required in order to improve the knowledge sharing and communication in virtual teams.

Suomen ICT-sektori vuonna 2015

Tässä diplomityössä ”Suomen ICT-sektori vuonna 2015” käsitellään Suomen tietoyhteiskunnan ja tietotekniikan tulevaisuutta kansainvälisestä ja kansallisesta näkökulmasta. Se koskee niin Yhdysvaltojen, Japanin, Euroopan Unionin kuin Suomenkin tietoyhteiskuntia. Suomen tietoyhteiskunnan ja EU:n ICT-sektorin vahvuudet, heikkoudet, uhat ja mahdollisuudet käyvät tästä diplomityöstä ilmi. Yhdysvallat, Japani ja EU toimivat suunnan antajana Suomen ICT-sektorin tulevaisuudelle. Euroopan Unioni on laatinut ICT-sektoria ja koko EU:ta koskevan Lissabonin strategian, joka käsittää niin EU:n eri kansakuntia koskevan taloudellisen panostuksen, innovaatiokehityksen, koulutuksen kuin tutkimuksen ja tuotekehityksenkin. Suomen tietoyhteiskunta on monilla alueilla maailman kärkitasoa, muutamilla sen keskitasoa. Suomen tietoyhteiskunnan vahvuudet, heikkoudet, uhat ja mahdollisuudet on kartoitettu Suomen tietoyhteiskuntastrategiassa vuosille 2007-2015. Se käsittää ne keinot, millä Suomi pystyy tulemaan kansainvälisesti tasapainoiseksi, hyväksi ja houkuttelevaksi paikaksi asua ja työskennellä sekä se käsittää ne keinot, jolla Suomen kilpailukyky taataan globaalisti kiristyvässä kilpailutilanteessa.

Markkinointiviestinnän välittämä imago business-to-business markkinoilla, mielikuvatavoitteena kestävä kehitys

Tässä pro gradu -tutkielmassa tarkasteltiin kansainvälisen metsäteollisuudessa toimivan yrityksen markkinointiviestintää ja sen välittämien imagoviestien siirtymistä business-to-business markkinoilla. Tutkittavat viestit liittyivät kartonkipakkausten kestävän kehityksen ja ympäristöystävällisyyden imagon rakentumiseen. Tutkimuksessa käytettiin kvalitatiivista tutkimusmenetelmää. Tutkimus pohjautui yrityksen teettämän aiemman asiakastutkimuksen aineistoon, jossa selvitettiin pakkauskartonkien mielikuvia kohderyhmässä. Lisäksi tutkittiin imagon viestintää markkinointiviestinnän näkökulmasta. Yrityksen online viestintää verrattiin asiakkaiden vastaavaan viestintään loppukäyttäjille ja selvitettiin siirtyivätkö kestävän kehityksen viestit loppukäyttäjille asti. Tuloksena saatiin osittain yhtenevä viestintä sekä yrityksen asiakkaiden että näiden loppukäyttäjille viestimien teemojen sisällöstä. Tutkimus osoitti, että tärkein viestinnällinen teema on pakkauksen kierrätettävyys. Toisena tärkeänä teemana ilmeni hiilijalanjäljen pienentämisestä viestivät seikat. Nousevana teemana voitiin havaita biohajoavia materiaaleja kohtaan osoitettu kiinnostus. Tutkimuksessa jaettiin vastaajat eri segmentteihin pakkauskartonkien käyttötarkoituksen mukaan ja verrattiin kestävän kehityksen tärkeyttä näiden segmenttien välillä. Segmenteittäin tarkasteltuna suuria eroja ei ollut havaittavissa.

A Communication Middleware Quality Enhancement with Qt Framework

In this thesis, a Peer-to-Peer communication middleware for mobile environment is developed using the Qt framework and the Qt Mobility extension. The Peer-to-Peer middleware – called as PeerHood – is for service sharing in network neighborhood. In addition, the PeerHood enables service connectivity and device monitoring functionalities. The concept of the PeerHood is already available in native C++ implementation on Linux platform using services from the platform. In this work, the PeerHood concept is remade to be based on use of the Qt framework. The objective of the new solution is to increase PeerHood quality with using functionalities from the Qt framework and the Qt Mobility extension. Furthermore, by using the Qt framework, the PeerHood middleware can be implemented to be portable cross-platform middleware. The quality of the new PeerHood implementation is evaluated with defined quality factors and compared with the existing PeerHood. Reliability, CPU usage, memory usage and static code analysis metrics are used in evaluation. The new PeerHood is shown to be more reliable and flexible that the existing one.

Consumer online communication of corporate social responsibility in the sin industry context: Cases in the global online gambling industry.

So-called sin industries are often related to harmfulness, unethical business, and unproductiveness. Nowadays, the alcohol, gambling, and tobacco industries are most often considered to be part of sin industries, which is also the context of this study. However, the definition of a sin industry is always related to time and culture. Despite the controversies of sin industries, there are studies that have shown that corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement is even more important for sin industries than for normal industries and that CSR has a positive effect on firm value in sin industries. With CSR this study refers to an ideology where company takes mostly voluntary actions towards various groups of stakeholders and the environment. In other words, the company goes beyond the legal norms and regulations. In particular, the purpose of this thesis is to find out how companies, operating in the online gambling industry, communicate about their CSR actions to consumers at their web pages. The online environment is essential for this study as online gambling environment is a source of many controversies in comparison to the traditional gambling halls and casinos. These include, for example, greater accessibility, anonymity, and availability of the service. This study uses qualitative textual analysis as its approach, more precisely the discourse analysis. In addition, as this study focuses on large international companies and their actions, also case study approach will be presented. The cases studied are Mybet, Unibet, and Bwin.Party. In order to study the subject, elements from discourse analysis are combined with insights of essential CSR theories, and the specific characteristics of the online gambling industry. As a background for the framework, this study uses the framework of Du & Vieira (2012). After analyzing the discourses of CSR communication and CSR practices, it seems that all of the case companies still do not use all the potential that the online environment provides in terms of CSR or stakeholder communication. There are large differences between different communication tools used at different web pages (gambling pages vs. corporation pages) and between the firms’ CSR profiles. Moreover, there are large differences in the CSR practices used in the web pages of the case companies. The findings of this study are partially alarming as the case companies represent the largest companies in the industry. There are major varieties between the companies’ CSR communication and clear shortcomings in some parts of the online communication. Moreover, the trust of the consumer was broken in some places. If this is the standard that the biggest players in the industry have set with regards to CSR communication, it is probable that the smaller players are performing even worse. Moreover, the regulators are most likely concentrating on the larger companies, so the smaller companies might have fewer incentives and pressure to perform according to the regulations or exceeding the legislation. The conclusions of this thesis provide insights to managers, regulators, and scholars. Suggestions for future studies are provided as well.

MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS IN B2B COMPANIES – The Roles of Marketing Communication Tools in the Digital Age

Marketing communications has gone through significant changes during the last decades and new online tools have been leading this change for the last decade. Now, in the digital age, if wanting to be successful companies need to experiment new things and seize the opportunities online provides and adapt to the new environment. However, during this time the marketing communication mix and the meanings given to the various components of it have not changed dramatically, and personal selling, direct marketing, sales promotion, advertising and public relations activities are still regarded as important tools in the marketing communications mix. The purpose of this study was to examine business-to-business marketing communications and the tools used by companies in their marketing communications efforts in the digital age and in a global environment. The research questions dealt with the marketing communication tools and their roles as well as the role of online marketing communication and the way it has shaped the field of b2b marketing communications. In order to answer these questions, qualitative approach was chosen and the data was collected by theme interviews with six representatives of Finnish global companies from the b2b sector being interviewed. The theoretical framework covers the general field of b2b marketing communications and its main elements. The online environment as well as the concept of a global marketplace and integrated approach to marketing communication activities is also discussed. The theory was supported by the interviews regarding the activities and roles of the marketing communication tools and both theory as well as the interviews found personal selling to be a vital tool. However, the importance of online has grown and online marketing activities have risen right next to personal selling. The use of analytics and marketing automation was found to be of great interest in the interviews and they were seen as a growing domain in b2b marketing communications. The importance of targeted and personalised messages from relevant medias was a repeating theme as was the customer-centric approach in marketing communication activities. Also, offline and online tools and channels were seen as something that should be treated together as an entity rather than as separate activities. Relevant content created according to the needs of the customer with the gathered data from analytics were seen as the future of b2b marketing communications. Online has added its input to the more traditionally perceived tools and they are executed within the framework of the digital age. Nevertheless, even though online has increased its presence in the b2b marketing communications mix, the more traditionally perceived marketing communication tools, especially personal selling, have not lost their meaning or place in the b2b marketing communication mix.

Pitkä tie perustuslakiuudistukseen

Abstract: The long road to the constitutional reform